from the of-course-it-was dept

We've talked in the past how the US Patent Office is really bad at getting it right with patents. This is supported by the fact that the vast majority of patents that are presented for a post-grant re-exam have some or all of their claims changed or rejected. That spells major trouble for anyone who believes that patents accurately tell the market what is allowed and what is not -- when the USPTO doesn't even seem to know itself. Even more troubling is when courts make rulings over patents while they're still being re-examined, as the ruling itself may depend on the validity of that patent. This has gone on for years. For example, in one of the most famous patent trolling cases, RIM paid out $612.5 million to NTP, even as the USPTO was in the process of rejecting those patents.

The latest news is that, upon re-exam, the Patent Office has now rejected all 21 claims in Apple's infamous "pinch to zoom" 7,844,915 patent. Apple and patent enthusiasts will rightly point out that this is just the first step in the process -- Apple still can and will appeal, and it's very likely that the Patent Office will eventually allow some (perhaps modified) form of the patent to live on. However, since that is one of the patents involved in the Apple/Samsung patent fight, at best this creates even more confusion, since no one knows what that patent will eventually look like. This makes the problem of defining the "boundaries" of what a patent covers even more ridiculous. We already know that so many patents are written broadly, and in a somewhat indecipherable manner, such that they can be applied broadly. But when the boundaries are also subject to the whim of whoever's desk it lands on, it suggests a real problem with the system. We shouldn't be handing out massive monopolies, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, based on the arbitrary judgment of some random patent examiner, when it appears that there is no objective standard at all, but rather a series of (historically bad) guesses. That's no way to build an innovative economy.

from the amazing dept

We have discussed at great lengths the problems of the US setting up a specialized appeals court that handles patent cases, known as CAFC or the court of appeals for the federal circuit. That court has tended to lean increasingly "pro-patent" over the years, presiding over the greatest judicial-driven expansion of the patent system and what it covers. For a few years, the Supreme Court had started smacking down the massive overreach of CAFC, but in the past two years, it's started to back down and let CAFC do its thing again.

If there was a "poster child" for the ridiculous excesses of the patent system, it was NTP, the results of a company that completely flopped in the marketplace (because it couldn't execute) that then successfully used the patent system to pressure RIM -- a company who successfully executed where NTP failed -- to hand over an astounding $612.5 million, even as the USPTO had made it clear that it found NTP's patents unlikely to be valid.

Despite NTP and its small group of investors making out like bandits on the RIM case, they continued to sue a lot more companies. Unlike in the RIM case, where the judge put tremendous pressure on RIM to settle, even as the USPTO had made it clear that it was likely to reject NTP's patents, in these other cases, the judges wisely decided to wait for the USPTO, who did, in fact, invalidate many NTP patent claims.

And, of course, NTP appealed the USPTO's reasoning... and along comes CAFC to say that the USPTO got it wrong, and it needs to reconsider its invalidation of claims in seven of NTP's patents, meaning that NTP has, yet again, been given new life. And, of course, thanks to the somewhat idiotic and dangerous "presumption of validity," this means that the courts need to treat those patents as valid while the USPTO reviews them yet again.